Dan Kennedy Talked About Recession Proofing

I had the privlage of attending a Dan Kennedy seminar today. That is me with Dan pictured to the left.

I wanted to share a little of what he said as he came to the topic of the recession. I thought this was relevant since the topic of raising tuition is always challenging for us martial arts school owners.

I personally believe we could charge $500 a month and grossly undercharge for the incredible value we provide. But many school owners have a very hard time charging what they are really worth.

And it is not just us martial artists that get nervous about raising prices, it happens in every industry. We are all worried if we raise our fees everyone will quit.

Well, Dan was discussing the recession and said in times like these the massive knee jerk reaction by 99% of the people will be to lower their price. Then he urged the audience to do the opposite of what that 99% will do if we wish to be successful.

I won’t go into his entire tirade, but the gist of it was that in economic down times, volume will go down. To make up for this, the best thing to do is raise the prices. This will keep the income high when the transactions go down.

Disney did it. I went to Disney before the supershow and had noticed that ticket prices were about $10 more than my last visit 6 months earlier. They raised prices to make up for the folks who would not be coming. The folks who were planning to come were coming anyway, whether the price was higher or not.

Now, here is another important point. He is not just saying raise prices because he thinks it will help. He knows it will because he has seen it hundreds of times work for companies that follow this disciplined approach. Food for thought.